In a manner more than mildly reminiscent of the mess surrounding the questionable PlayStationPortable UMD medium, news has been emerging slowly over the weekend that Activision (also known as Activision Blizzard) may be considering dropping support for Sony’s PlayStation 3.

You have to hand it to them; even without games the PS3 is an imposing edifice.

Activision’s CEO, Robert Kotick talked frankly with Times Online about the current situation at Activision and the company’s perception of Sony’s PS3 as a platform. Kotick went so far as to say, “I’m getting concerned about Sony; the PlayStation 3 is losing a bit of momentum and they don’t make it easy for me to support the platform. It’s expensive to develop for the console, and the Wii and Xbox are just selling better. Games generate a better return on invested capital on the Xbox than on the PlayStation.” Strange as it is that he seems to use “me” to refer to Activision, the man makes a solid point.

As might be expected, responses from Sony have highlighted the company’s (we had thought lacklustre) E3 performance and basically said that things are going to get better from here. The real worry until now had been that the PS3 wouldn’t be seeing the high level of exclusive releases that kept the PS2 head and shoulders above its competition. Now, with the PS3 haemorrhaging exclusive titles (including Final Fantasy XIII), it’s beginning to look as though the industry’s biggest publisher may very well drop the PS3 entirely, which would spell very bad news indeed for Sony.

This news is only worse news when you consider the fact that, as Kotick himself points out, Activision paid Sony $500 million last year, while Sony’s game division quietly lost itself $597 million. With figures that big being bandied around, it’s hard not to pose the question, “Can Sony survive in the games industry without Activision?” Time will tell on that one, but for our money all this noise from Activision will prove to be just that, noise. It seems unlikely that Activision will drop support for the PS3 entirely, but moving away from the console gradually is a distinct possibility.

You can read more about the whole fiasco (complete with a lot of numbers, but sadly no graphs) at Times Online, here.